Planetoid #2 Review

Silas continues his adventure of trying to escape of the unknown planet in this latest issue. The story begins with an unknown group of people who are dead set on attacking the giant mechanical monsters-called Rovers-even if it kills them-and a couple of them do get to meet their maker. Elsewhere, Silas emerges from a sewer pipe accompanied by his guide Mendel who tells Silas how to continue his journey, and then they part ways.

After climbing up a monstrosity of an architectural structure called the Slab, Silas spends the night and the next day after watching a ship crash not to far away from the Slab, he gets captured by a lady named Onica and her alien friend Ebo. Onica explains to Silas that the Rovers do the bidding of the Ono Mao as she has had a past encounter with them. Silas believes that if they can get back to the ship and fix it, they’ll be able to leave the planet.

Meanwhile, Onica scans the horizon to check if the coast is clear and sees a that same unknown group of people be ambushed by three Rovers. Silas convinces Onica to untie him and the fight begins…

I enjoyed this issue and though I didn’t read the first issue, this second issue definitely piqued my interest to continue to read the series. I liked Garing’s story telling and I enjoyed his artwork. His artwork is very detailed and puts objects such as the spacecraft into perspective. You can tell visually how huge it is and it’s realistic.

Verdict
So far, I think readers are getting their money’s worth with this comic. I’m curious to see what will happen next.

4 Responses

What’s impressing me by Planetoid is how much story Garing is able to convey through his artwork. Without speech bubbles and captions, we get a sense of exactly what Silas is thinking and how he’s struggling to adapt to this new world. The new characters that were introduced in this issue were pretty interesting and I’m excited to learn more about them. The splash page with the massive spaceship was my favorite part of the issue, and I found myself flipping back to it just to marvel at the art.
Great review! I don’t think you’re really missing much to the story if you haven’t read the first issue, but it’s still well worth a read!

Ken Garing has continued to fascinate me with #2. And just like in issue #1 there are a couple of beautifully rendered landscapes and pages where nothing is actually said for quite a while. In fact there are four pages of Silas just journeying along, we see him kill a lizard type pest, take a drink and stop for a piss. not many comics could carry off having no dialougue for such long periods but Ken Garing carries it off with aplomb. I could read a whole issue of this comic with just Silas on his own. The art is that strong that it just sucks you into the ‘Used Future’ landscape in which he sets his story.
You mention that spaceship and it is indeed a brilliant splash page with amazing detail on that battered ship. The introduction of those 2 new characters opens up interesting avenues for Garing to take this story. But i don’t think I’m wrong in saying no Chewbacca, no Ebo…right? Its definitely that kind of relationship that he and Onica have. But thats not a criticism.
The exposition of what exactly went wrong on the planet and what is being ‘mined’ now is both awesomely and gruesomely explained, particularly in that ‘lobotomy’ panel. The final scene where Silas saunters towards the robots and does his thing is great. You get the feeling that Onica was well impressed…possible romance in the offing? We’ll see.
I’d honestly recommend picking up #1, it’s a fantastic opener and has more of those long quiet patches that Garing seems to excel at.